I missed this film when it was first released but I've always meant to see it at some point and this evening I did. Before watching this I knew very little about the original poem and only the very basic details about the story in general. Most of what I do know comes from a Star Trek: Voyager episode where there is a holodeck version of the story. Still demons and dragons along with some interesting CG work made we want to check it out. The big technical thing with this film is the performance capture system and the CG renderings of real actors. I suppose this has been improved on since with films like Avatar, but unlike the Na'vi human faces are being recreated here. They are all very well done and you can certainly tell which actor is behind the characters with ease. It's not perfect though and that is to do with the texturing and animation. The textures are not totally photo-real and so it has that obvious CG look. Also some of the animation seems a little stiff, slightly robot-like is the best way I can describe it. Part of that probably stems from the fact that it's over four years old now. It's the most obvious in the faces, particularly in the women. The men get wrinkles, stubble and beards to cover things up, but the women all seem too smooth. The general environments were great though. It gives the impression of a high-end cutscene from a computer game rather than a motion picture. That is until you get into the story and stop worrying so much about the look. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, especially with the look of Grendel, but I enjoyed it a lot in the end.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Beowulf
I missed this film when it was first released but I've always meant to see it at some point and this evening I did. Before watching this I knew very little about the original poem and only the very basic details about the story in general. Most of what I do know comes from a Star Trek: Voyager episode where there is a holodeck version of the story. Still demons and dragons along with some interesting CG work made we want to check it out. The big technical thing with this film is the performance capture system and the CG renderings of real actors. I suppose this has been improved on since with films like Avatar, but unlike the Na'vi human faces are being recreated here. They are all very well done and you can certainly tell which actor is behind the characters with ease. It's not perfect though and that is to do with the texturing and animation. The textures are not totally photo-real and so it has that obvious CG look. Also some of the animation seems a little stiff, slightly robot-like is the best way I can describe it. Part of that probably stems from the fact that it's over four years old now. It's the most obvious in the faces, particularly in the women. The men get wrinkles, stubble and beards to cover things up, but the women all seem too smooth. The general environments were great though. It gives the impression of a high-end cutscene from a computer game rather than a motion picture. That is until you get into the story and stop worrying so much about the look. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, especially with the look of Grendel, but I enjoyed it a lot in the end.
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Ooh, this is a nice surprise! I am glad to see that you liked it, and not at all surprised that your knowledge of the story comes via Sci Fi, I am getting used to that now, lol. I saw this at the cinema when it came out, and I was interested to read your analysis of the technical side, which seemed rather experimental at the time, but cleverly done, though of course I did not know how they had done it, like you did. I was interested to see if the poetry was there, not expecting it to be, and was pleased that it was, a bit - now and then, it sang through. Did you know that Beowulf was one of the inspirations for the poetry of the Rohirrim in LOTR?
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